[citation needed] Securitization begins with a speech act concerning a particular threat, by an authoritative national leader, institution, or party.
As Thierry Braspenning-Balzacq puts it: "securitization is a rule-governed practice, the success of which does not necessarily depend on the existence of a real threat, but on the discursive ability to effectively endow a development with such a specific complexion".
However, Uriel Abulof argues that empirical studies on securitization have been "insufficiently attentive to societies engulfed in profound existential uncertainty about their own survival."
Taking Israel's "demographic demon" as a case in point, Abulof suggests that such societies are immersed in "deep securitization", whereby "widespread public discourses explicitly frame threats as probable, protracted, and endangering the very existence of the nation/state.
The ability to effectively securitize a given subject is, however, highly dependent on both the status of a given actor and whether similar issues are generally perceived to be security threats.
As it is easier to securitize an issue following the September 11 attacks, this concern for safety and security has taken attention away from the economic factors that have always been at play in international migration.
[citation needed] For example, theorists suggest that advocates of space exploration could achieve more success by convincing state actors of the merits of their proposals around the rubric of security rather than science: that space exploration could be framed around how it protects humanity from looming existential threats such as meteorites, rather than around how it helps advance scientific knowledge.
"[15] Liberal scholars such as Daniel Deudney have criticised securitization as being too liable to unleash the emotive power of nationalism in unhelpful ways.
[5] In a 2009 report, public policy analyst Ben Hayes warns that the true beneficiaries from securitization are not general populations, but corporations: He argues that the arms and security companies lobby for a securitised agenda in the corridors of power in Brussels and Washington and subsequently win contracts to implement militarised security policies.
[17] Regarding the securitization of migration, researcher Ainhoa Ruiz Benedicto warns of the adverse effects for forcibly displaced persons: "In this context of securitisation of border regions, population movement is understood and treated as a suspicious activity that needs to be controlled, monitored and registered, while the migration of often forcibly displaced people and refugees is seen as a security threat that must be intercepted.